Vigilante group brought sex offender to garda station

By Declan Brennan

A vigilante group targeting potential online child exploitation brought a convicted sex offender to a garda station after a sting operation on Facebook, a court has heard.

In August 2024, Michael Macken (41) was caught having highly sexualised conversations with what he believed were nine different teenage girls.

The Facebook accounts were adults pretending to be young teens in order to expose potential child predators, and the “children” did not exist.

Macken, with a former address in Stoneybatter, Dublin, was charged with nine counts of communicating with a person with the intention to facilitate sexual exploitation of a child and pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to a number of sample counts.

He was also charged with six counts of attempting to send sexually explicit material to a child and pleaded guilty to a single sample count.

Sentencing on Wednesday, Judge Orla Crowe said Macken was someone who clearly has “a deep sexual interest” and “a sexual proclivity towards young children”

Judge Crowe said Macken’s previous convictions were “very concerning”, referring to the fact that he had two convictions for sexual assaults of two young children.

She accepted that Macken has lower intellectual functioning, was living rough in a tent at the time and lived “a lonely existence”.

Judge Crowe said the offending was “really serious and deeply concerning” before she said a headline sentence of 10 years was warranted.

The judge then imposed two concurrent sentences of eight years. She suspended the final six months of that sentence on condition that Macken remain under the supervision of The Probation Service for 18 months, during which time he is also to make any of his electronic devices available to gardaí for their scrutiny.

Detective Garda Keith Alford told Aideen Collard BL, prosecuting, that on a date in August 2024, about 20 people from a “self-appointed” vigilante group came to Macken's parents' home in Coolock, where he was then living.

The Northern Ireland-based group, calling themselves Child Online Protection Enforcers NI, confronted Macken with evidence that he had been trying to contact children online for sexual exploitation.

Seoirse Ó Dúnlaing SC, defending, put it to Det Gda Alford that some of the group were wearing hi-vis vests and that at one stage, his client, who has extremely low intellectual functioning, believed they were gardai.

Counsel said that some of the group “bundled” Macken into a car and drove him to the garda station where “there was uproar”. The court heard a public order incident outside the garda station led to two people from the group being charged with public order offences.

Gardai took Macken into custody for his own protection. He then admitted he had been using Facebook to contact children, who he believed were 14 years old and younger. He said he did it because he was bored.

In text conversations read out in court, Macken asked some of the girls if they would get into bed with him. He asked one girl to undress and to touch her breasts while he asked another to send him pictures of her in bed in her nightie.

He asked one girl, who told him she was 12 years old, for a photo of her in bed and asked if her breasts would fit in his hand. He asked another girl for a photo of her in her uniform.

On WhatsApp, he texted one girl about inserting objects inside herself and invited her to take a video call. He sent her links to online adult porn, asking her if she would do what she saw on that website. Det Gda Alford said the profile image on the WhatsApp account was “obviously a young girl”.

Macken has two previous convictions for sexual assault, including the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl at an amusement arcade in Trabolgan, Co Cork in 2006.

Mr Ó Dúnlaing told the court that his client did not apply for bail after his arrest for a charge on February 21st, 2025.